Ice Song: Fantasy on an Inuit Poem

Anna Rubin

Soprano and Percussion

Icesong (1993) is scored for soprano or mezzo and percussion (vibraphone and several small drums, rattles and metal instruments). I created the text after reading a haunting Inuit story describing one Inuit community’s struggle for food in the dead of winter. The song is sung as the story of one woman’s terrible dilemma as she gives birth while the hunters of the village are away trying to get food for their starving families. The vocal line is melismatic; the musical language atonal and the percussion used for timbral variety and intensification. Isabelle Ganz premiered the work at MusicAlaskaMusic Conference in Fairbanks in 1993; it was most recently performed in Germany in 2005 by contralto Wiebke Hoogklimmer.